Dusk in Kalevia: Chapter 11

Time slowed for Kaija, seeping ahead like a drop of blood through a bandage. She tossed and turned in her cocoon of mildewed blankets, wracked with chills despite the crackling stove. Her whole body felt bruised, her flesh stretched too tight over her aching bones. Pain rippled along her skin with each soft brush of quilt fabric, and reality fell away, ceding the stage to fever dreams both frustrating and interminable. It was a slow drowning, stifling even while she drew breath. Once, during a moment of lucidity, she realized that she was grasping at the air above her, arms extended toward some forgotten hallucination just beyond her reach.

Some time later–whether minutes or hours, she could not be sure–the bright, clear strains of a melody pierced through the haze. The song gently lifted the veil of her fever and buoyed her back up into the surface of sanity. She lay with her eyes closed, letting the sharp notes of plucked strings and the voice that sang the melody fall softly upon her.

What a voice it was–a voice that could plow earth into mountains and sing the moon down from the sky, deep and resonant as though the air itself had begun to croon. She feared that if she woke fully, the dream-music would fade away, but when it persisted into her stirring consciousness, she dared to open her eyes.

The lantern was lit, and an old man sat in the rocking chair in the corner, playing a kantele. His fingers danced across the lyre strings, bringing forth a tune of such beauty that Kaija almost forgot to breathe. His features were softened and obscured in the dim light of the cabin, but Kaija could still make out something of his appearance, odd as it was.

The man was dressed in humble apparel of the old style–like an illustration of one of the sagas come to life. He wore a simple tunic of rough woven cloth dyed in earthen tones and boots bound with strips of cloth. Atop his long, wispy mane, he wore a small, round cap, and his white locks tangled together with his ample beard. He looks so very old, she thought, a grandfather at least, but the strong voice flowing from his mouth belied his aged appearance.

Kaija held herself as still as possible, hoping that he would not notice her, unsure of whether or not he was even real. She entertained a fleeting worry that this was the cabin’s resident, returning for an offseason excursion in the middle of a blizzard, but it seemed so unlikely that she immediately dismissed it. The simple explanation was that this was merely a continuation of her delirium, but her senses felt true–the blanket rough and heavy against her skin, the smoky crackle of the stove mingling with the music.

Kaija suddenly realized that she didn’t care. She felt soothed, like everything she had been through was being sung away, pain and sorrow floating away like autumn leaves on the current.

It was then that Kaija saw the bear. It lay at the man’s feet, its dark bulk gently rising and falling and its chin resting on its paws. As she stared, frozen against the mattress, the beast stirred and lifted its shaggy head, its bright eyes peering at her with an eerily intelligent curiosity.

She felt like she was falling even as she lay upon her back, her world tilting with the strange giddiness of fear and blood loss. At this, the bard’s fingers finally stilled. He set his instrument upon his lap and looked at her.

“You’re waking up,” he said.

She met his merry blue eyes as they twinkled in the firelight, and fell hard into the grasp of another hallucination.

She dreamt she was in a boat at sea, surrounded by warriors straining at the oars through the rough waters. At the prow stood the old man, and Kaija tried to call out to him, sputtering as she caught the salt spray in her mouth.

At the pale bard’s feet lay the most beautiful object she had ever seen: an ancient mill with the diameter of a large tree trunk. Rounded and metallic with an ornate handle on top, its cover sparkled with constellations like the night sky. It was so intricately designed that she could scarcely believe it was a thing crafted by human hands–a dream that would not stand up to the scrutiny of the waking mind.

Something about this was familiar to her. She had seen this happen before. Not like this, but perhaps in her mind’s eye…

“Look!” cried the bard, jabbing his finger at a dark shape flying toward them against the rising sun. “The witch!”

She fell out of the sky like a lightning bolt, clad in the gleaming metal form of a monstrous eagle. Her crone face howled from the midst of razor-sharp feathers, apoplectic with rage. She snatched at the artifact with talons like scythes, spewing a spiteful tirade from her wrinkled mouth.

“How dare you try to steal the prosperity of my people!” she screeched, spittle flying with every word. “You wicked, evil old bastard! I won’t let you have it! Not you, not anyone!”

As she struggled to lift the golden mill aloft, one of the men, in a flash of bravery, struck at her with his sword. The blow did little more than break a few of her claws, but it provided a window of opportunity in which the old man grabbed an oar and began to beat at the giant eagle body. The witch screamed and dropped the mill to the deck with a clang, and began to fly around the boat, gnashing her teeth and cursing the names of the men aboard–who jeered and shook their swords up at her.

She made one final attempt at the treasure, succeeding in hooking a single uninjured talon around its celestial lid, but when she wrested it over the ship’s red bow, her strength seemed to fail her. It tumbled from her grasp into the depths.

She let out a heart-wrenching scream, and there was a collective intake of breath from the warship’s crew. With one last cry, the witch flew north and the waters grew still.

Kaija knew then that she had seen this moment countless times, as she lay in her bed reading her books of legends. This was the story where the Sampo was lost–the object that could erase all want from the land. Why this dream? Why now?

The old bard Väinämöinen turned to her.

The world shifted again, and she found herself climbing, her hide-swaddled feet seeking holds in the rock. She was no longer naked, but clothed in a soft white tunic that fluttered against her skin in the cool breeze. The bear walked ahead of her on the mountain slope, its round backside swaying ponderously in the dim light. It stopped and turned to her, as though entreating her to follow, and she scrambled to catch up, slipping and scraping her palms on the lichen-dusted stone.

When she crested the peak, she was struck by the beauty of the vista stretching out below. Still pools were nestled in the breast of old-growth forest, a land of water and rock and pine, lowland fens stretching out toward the ocean’s distant shore. The sun crept over the horizon’s edge and touched each of the lakes in turn, tinting them with honey and brushing gold across the treetops. The bear waited calmly beside her, and she laid a hand on the dense fur of its back to steady herself, trusting instinctively that it meant her no harm.

They stood and watched the sunrise, the cool, salt-tinged breeze playing through Kaija’s hair and ruffling the brown fur that bristled around the bear’s muzzle. After a moment, Kaija became aware of another presence near her, and turned to find that Väinämöinen had quietly joined them. He stared out over the land with a faraway look in his eyes, stroking his snowy beard in contemplation.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” he said in a rumbling baritone.

She nodded, unable to think of anything to add.

“Kalevia looks peaceful from up here. You’d never know this was a land at war with itself.”

At this, Kaija felt tears threatening to brim over her lower lids, chilled by the steady ocean breeze.

“Everything’s so broken now,” she mumbled. “So fouled up…”

The old man laid a calloused hand upon her shoulder and shook his head.

“People always tell stories of a time when things were perfect–a time when life had no hardship. Every land has its legends. The loss of a garden, the world tree torn asunder…”

“The Sampo,” she said, finally understanding.

“It was meant to be lost. Existence has always been a struggle, offering hope with one hand and fear with the other.” He looked at her, his beautiful voice gaining in volume, his wild hair touched by the wind and the morning light. “Yet you still go on. You create stories from that fear and that hope–give them faces and names. You forge ahead in this broken, imperfect world.”

The bear’s heavy head nuzzled against Kaija’s leg, and she stroked it for a time before replying.

“We survive.”

“Like light in the darkness, little bear. And without darkness, we would not see the light.” He nodded and withdrew his hand from her arm. “Now, go.”

Before she could speak, there was another shift, and Kaija was blinking at a ray of sunlight falling through the frosted window of the cabin.

She lay in the bed, feeling the ache of her wounds, her hair and pillow damp with tears.

**

In the usual manner of recuperation, the next few days seemed to both fly by and drag on endlessly for Kaija. The first morning found her terribly weak, slipping in and out of sleep and only moving to take sips of water from the tin cup by her bedside. When the need to urinate finally grew unbearable, Kaija tore herself from the bed to piss in the glass jar she had seen on the windowsill, tossing the desiccated remains of wildflowers onto the floor. Her legs could barely support her–her injury sent spasms of pain up her thigh–but she still forced herself drag a few more logs into the stove and stir up the embers, bringing back the roaring blaze of the day before. She knew the fire was the only thing keeping her alive, and tending to it would remain her first priority.

On the second day, she changed her bandages and once again went through the ordeal of disinfecting her wounds. The graze on her shoulder had scabbed over nicely, but her leg was still oozing blood in the center of the cut. Although swollen, it didn’t seem infected, so she dosed it with warm water and alcohol, dressed it with fresh strips of shirt, and nursed the bottle of vodka in front of the fire, feeling bleak yet relieved.

By the afternoon, she was strong enough to investigate the cabin for food and clothing. The cupboards were bare, but after a thorough search she came across a few tins of herring, a jar of preserves, and a metal tin of stale oatmeal forgotten in the back corner of a cabinet. She rationed these meager provisions into a respectable diet of two bowls of porridge and a few mouthfuls of the oily fish daily, which she found surprisingly fortifying. Her luck with clothing was middling as well–fisherman’s waders, a flannel shirt, and a baggy black dress with a torn hem were squirreled away in the various trunks and cubbyholes of the summerhouse.

As she pulled the old dress over her head, wincing at the pain in her shoulder, she felt a touch of sudden awkwardness, as though she were donning a costume not her own. She had spent so much time living as a boy that the skirt swirling around her legs felt foreign to her–a coarse pretense of femininity. It brought her back to a time before, a version of her completely removed from the person she had grown into. She hated that. Thinking about her childhood was always painful, but at least she had found another person who had shouldered a tiny piece of that burden.

Which brought her back to the one thing she absolutely had to do. She had only so much time left, for who knew when that mutinous wretch would make his next attempt on Vesa’s life? Who was he, and why was he doing this?

No, it didn’t matter. The only important thing was to find Vesa and help him. No matter who threatened him, rebel or traitor, she would protect him with the life she had snatched back from the jaws of death. She would heal, prepare, and plan.

There must be a road nearby, she reasoned, since people use this summerhouse. On the fourth day, once the weather was clear, she layered all the clothing that wasn’t too bloodstained or destroyed and packed a small bag with a few useful tools from the cabin. With that, Kaija ventured once more into the outside world.

The sun shone upon the snow, melting it into a glittering crust that supported her weight. As she walked over the icy hills, enjoying the silence of the winter woods, she favored her injured leg a bit, but felt surprisingly alert and strong. A few birds bantered back and forth above her, and off in the distance, the harsh croaking of a raven; she occasionally heard the heavy thud of a bough relieving itself of its burden. After an hour or so of walking, she crossed a set of bear tracks, and instead of feeling nervous, took their discovery as an auspicious sign.

It was then that she heard the approaching rumble of a diesel engine.

She scrambled down the hill, and sure enough, she saw the logging road through a strand of birches, and a train of flatbed trucks with cargos of lumber. She managed to flag down the last truck, and the driver slowed and cranked down his window.

“Whoa there, miss. What’s the trouble?”

She was once again reminded of how strange it felt to be dressed as a woman.

“You folks going toward Vainola?” she asked, hoping that he wouldn’t be suspicious about her plight. He had kind eyes and a bearded, paternal face.

“Roughly thereabouts. Need a lift?”

Kaija smiled. “Thanks. Got snowed in,” she said, and climbed up into the cab.

Proceed to Chapter 11, page 3–>